That damage would be done to popular trust in the BBC by the fallout from a sex scandal is something those more interested in the issue of bias could not have foreseen. The terrible miscalculation over the dropping of the Newsnight Savile report, and the almost incredible sloppiness evident in the journalism of that programme's infamous claim to have unearthed a paedophile Tory grandee, could be seen as the kind of things which tend to happen when a programme is already in decline-which, with falling audiences and an increasing air of irrelevance, Newsnight is. But last year also provided an example of how the BBC could no longer be trusted to do what it had always prided itself on. The wretched coverage of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, which trivialised and vulgarised a national event of historic importance, and which drew 4,000 complaints, was evidence not just that the BBC could no longer be relied upon in such circumstances. It also showed a certain attitude: at best a simple inability to understand those who might want to celebrate, at worst an instinctive distaste for something it would regard as old-fashioned and nationalistic. It was far happier with the overtly multicultural Olympics, its coverage of which was consequently a great success.

The BBC has been engaged in its own impartiality review, which will report next month. It is not the first and, to be fair, in recent years the corporation has admitted that its reporting on some issues has not been what it should. The former director-general Mark Thompson admitted to an anti-Thatcher bias in the 1980s, and the BBC's undoubted and unbalanced enthusiasm for the EU has been acknowledged. On the latter there has certainly been an improvement in coverage: Eurosceptics are no longer treated as though mentally impaired. In his report, Ed West also sees some signs of change in the reporting of immigration.

But this is still minor progress. It is almost impossible to quantify how much damage the BBC may have done by the way in which it has chosen to present the most important issues of the day and consequently influence the drift of events. While the BBC remains in thrall to a kind of groupthink, there is little hope that the situation will change significantly. Sure enough, only last month Ian Katz,  deputy editor of the Guardian, was named as the new editor of Newsnight — appropriately enough, considering that readership of that newspaper far exceeds that of all others at Broadcasting House.

There is in Britain little support for the abolition of the licence fee. The BBC still does many things exceptionally well, and there remains a solid base of popular, albeit diminished, goodwill. I am probably fairly typical in being anxious and infuriated by much of its news output, yet at the same time having little desire to see it disappear completely. What is needed is simply an alternative. There is nothing more useless or demoralising than standing in the kitchen all night complaining about the awfulness of the party going on in the next room: either leave, or hold your own party. A British version of Fox News would inject new dynamism into our monolithic broadcast media and  our increasingly disembodied political debate. With an alienated, non-metropolitan country feeling a growing sense of disfranchisement, there would surely be an audience for such a channel. It would act as a balance, and a much-needed challenge. The BBC would then, surely, sit up and take notice.